LIBERTY – Since 2012, the Catskill Edible Garden Project has been bringing hands-on garden learning to schools and youth groups across Sullivan County. Thanks to the partnership of Sullivan 180, Catskill Mountainkeeper, and Cornell Cooperative Extension, these gardens grow more than food. They grow curiosity, connection, and community. Sullivan 180’s garden coordinator, Eva Bedmar, talked about the program.

“An edible garden is a garden that grows things that you can eat. It can be vegetables, fruit, herbs that you use for cooking, edible flowers like nasturtiums, which are really fun for kids to experience,” she said. “It’s anything that you can use to eat and that gives you nutrition.”

She said kids are surprised when they see food that they eat come out of the ground.

“Digging up their first potato, realizing you have potatoes in so many things, like French fries, but that potato grows underground, and you dig it up and find it in the dirt like a little treasure.”

Grow Kits are new this year; schools and other organizations can receive pre-selected seedlings and seeds from tomatoes, strawberries, marigolds, and sunflowers. It will be ready to plant, nurture, and harvest.

Local farms are growing those seedlings for us that we will then give to the schools so that the kids can have their hands on them and directly plant them, and eventually harvest them.